EUTHANASIA. 



9i 



death ; all needful precautions being adopted to prevent any possible 

 abuse of such duty and means being taken to establish, beyond the 

 possibility of doubt or question, that the remedy was applied at the 

 express wish of the patient.' 1 '' 



After describing the tortures of lingering disease leading to inevi- 

 table death, the writer remarks : 



" Cases such as this abound on every hand ; and those who have 

 had to witness suffering of this kind, and to stand helplessly by, long- 

 ing to minister to the beloved one, yet unable to bring any real respite 

 or relief, may well be impatient with the easy-going spirit that sees in 

 all this misery so long as it does not fall upon itself nothing but 

 ' the appointed lot of man ; ' and that opposes, as almost impious or 

 profane, every attempt to deal with it effectually. 



" AVhy, it must be asked again, should all this unnecessary suffer- 

 ing be endured ? The patient desires to die ; his life can no longer be 

 of use to others, and has become an intolerable burden to himself; the 

 patient's friends submit to the inevitable, but seek the means of rob- 

 bing death of its bitterest sting protracted bodily pain ; the medi- 

 cal attendant is at the bedside with all the resources of his knowledge 

 and his skill ready to his hand ; he could, were he permitted, bring to 

 his patient immediate and permanent relief. Why is he not allowed 

 to do so, or, rather, why should not his doing so be a recognized and 

 sovereign duty ? " 



To the objection that such a course would be a violation of the 

 sacredness of life, the author rejoins : 



" It may well be doubted if life have any sacredness about it, apart 

 from the use to be made of it by its possessor. Nature certainly knows 

 nothing of any such sacredness, for there is nothing of which she is so 

 prodigal ; and a man's life, in her eyes, is of no more value than a 

 bird's. And, hitherto, man has shown as little sense of the value of 

 man's life as Nature herself, whenever his passions or lusts or interests 

 have been thwarted by his brother man, or have seemed likely to be 

 forwarded by his brother man's destruction. A sense of the value of 

 his own individual life to himself, man has, indeed, seldom been defi- 

 cient in ; and, by a kind of reflex action, this sense has slowly given 

 birth to, and alway underlies, the sense, such as it is, of the value of 

 other men's lives. But even to-day, and amid the most civilized coun- 

 tries of Europe, ' the sacredness of man's life ' is thrown to the winds, 

 the moment national or political passion grows hot, or even when mere 

 material interests are seriously threatened. And, indeed, seeing that 

 life is so transitory a thing, and that, at the best, it has to be laid aside 

 forever, within the brief space of its threescore years and ten, it is 

 hard to understand the meaning of the word ' sacred ' when applied to 

 it, except in so far as the word may signify the duty laid on each man 

 of using his life nobly while he has it. 



" The objection, then, based on the sacredness of life, may be dis- 



